“Alkalize It” or Why your body’s pH matters

You may or may not remember from high school chemistry class that pH is a measure of the acidity or alkalinity of any substance; also known as an “acid” or “base”.

What many people don’t know is that your body’s internal pH, caused by the food you eat, affects your health.

This can be a bit confusing, so I’ll try to explain it simply.

Food can be classified as either acidic or alkaline in one of two ways.

The first way is before you eat it, like an orange sitting on the counter, which is acidic.

The second way is the residue (or ash) it leaves in your body after you eat it.

This ash residue left behind by food is basically minerals that are either acidic or alkaline.

The effect food has on your internal pH is what matters.

The general rule of thumb is: Alkaline is good for you. Acid is bad.

Oranges are acidic, but they leave alkalizing minerals in your body; so they’re good.

Milk is an alkaline base, but it’s actually acid-forming in your body; not as good.

Confused yet? Don’t worry, keep reading.

Why your body’s pH matters:

A host of illnesses like cancer and heart disease thrive in an acidic environment. Bacteria loves acidity as well.

If your diet consists of mostly animal products, cooked and processed food; then your internal pH is likely to be very acidic, as these are all acid forming foods.

Your body is constantly trying to maintain a normal pH balance as part of homeostasis, and one of the ways it does this is by leaching calcium from your bones and teeth to neutralize high acidity. People drink milk for protein and calcium to build “strong bones”, but milk is acid-forming. So the body ends up taking calcium from bones and teeth to balance out the acidity caused by milk. Kinda screwy right? This same internal phenomena occurs not just with milk drinkers but with all people who eat a high protein diet.

The optimal pH level for your body is 7.35-7.45, which is slightly more alkaline than acidic.

The solution is to eat more alkaline forming foods.

The Raw Vegan Diet is an all Alkaline Foods Diet. Many researchers have reported that cancer cannot live in an alkaline environment, which is why I adopted the raw vegan diet to battle cancer. But you don’t have to completely convert to raw veganism to be healthy.

Here’s what you need to know:

Acid-Forming Foods:All Animal Products, Grains, Cooked food, and Processed food.The worst acid forming foods are sugars, saturated fats, alcohol, and refined flour products like bread and pasta, and of course candy and junk food. Basically most of the stuff we all eat. Take this relatively “healthy” meal plan for example:

Some mildly acid-forming foods like certain fruits, veggies, clean meats and raw dairy, as well as fermented foods like yogurt and kefir are not necessarily bad, but a diet made up of mostly acidic foodsis.

Some super easy ways to add alkaline foods to your diet are:
-Squeeze a little lime juice in your water
-Drink a green powder supplement like Perfect Food every day

A really good balance is 80% Alkaline Foods and 20% Acid-forming foods. Basically the 80/20 rule.

It’s what your eating 70-80% of the time that matters most.

One way to look at it is if you eat 21 meals per week, 15 of them should ideally be vegetarian or vegan. Another idea along those lines that’s gaining in popularity is to be a Weekday Vegetarian. That’s where you eat super healthy all week and eat whatever you want on the weekend. Check out a great four minute video on this idea HERE.

The difference is this book suggested a supplement of baking soda to help with your pH. Weird, but true. They also pointed out in the book that some people are naturally alkaline have more energy even though they eat badly.

All in all, I found the book to be too strange to follow and eventually got rid of figuring it was wrong, but it did make me think more about pH.

Your article gives a much better view point on the subject and makes it easier to approach. Thanks.